As far as marketing ploys go, I think Blizzard have pretty much smashed it out the park with their latest one.
Over the weekend, it was teased in a tweet from the Overwatch account that something would be going down across would Hollywood, Paris, and Busan, Korea, and it’s safe to say that they went big.
Fans speculated over what it could be for a while, but as you can imagine, it’s not easy to keep massive action figures a secret for long – especially not when you install them in major cities.
Hollywood natives could head downtown to find a boxed (and giant) version of Overwatch character Tracer. The creator of that statue, Steve Wang, was on the scene too.
Apparently, the statues weighed three tons and required both a crane and a forklift to install. Check out Tracer standing proud below.
Meanwhile, The hero Genji was representing outside of Paris’ Pompidou Centre, while Busan played host to Pharah.
Genji is just below (and has just become my new favourite).
And here’s Phara…
Redditors have also begun compiling their own photos from each location, which you can check out right here.
It’s been pointed out that these figures were for promotional use only, and were in no way a confirmation of a series of Overwatch figures.
I’m sure, however, that it won’t be long till the colourful cast of Blizzard’s new game are immortalised in plastic form – just don’t expect them to be quite this big.
Overwatch comes to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC May 24. One thing’s for sure, if the people of Paris, Hollywood, and Busan didn’t know about the game before, they do now.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.